Consultants yet to seek licences for cannabis treatments

No consultant has applied for a licence to use medicinal cannabis to treat a patient, Health Minister Simon Harris has confirmed.

“I know there are difficult cases out there and I know that, at a human level, our hearts would go out to anybody in a difficult case,” said Mr Harris.

“If a consultant in this country believes that any person, be they a child or adult, requires a substance that is not a legal medicine, they can seek a licence from my department.”

However, he said yesterday, “as of now”, there was no application pending in his office for a licence to use medicinal cannabis.

“I have no such application. If I had such an application, it would be absolutely processed expeditiously.”

Mr Harris said he was the first minister for health to commission a policy review about medicinal cannabis. He asked the Health Products Regulatory Authority to look at the evidence for legalising cannabis for certain medical conditions.

When the HPRA reported back to him in January, it recommended the prescribing of medicinal cannabis for patients with specific medical conditions. The conditions are spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis, intractable nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy, and severe forms of epilepsy.

The report states that the scientific evidence supporting the safe and effective use of cannabis products for medical treatment was “insufficient and at times conflicting”.

The medicines authority believes having a controlled access programme that is confined to specific conditions will be “a significant first step that recognises patient need” while providing patient protection through medical consultant oversight.

Mr Harris accepted all of the authority’s recommendations and established a clinical group to develop an access programme. The group is due to report to the minister shortly. The plans received a broad welcome, but some campaigners called for the access programme to be expanded to include other conditions, especially chronic pain.

Mr Harris stressed that even when a compassionate access programme was operational later this year, medicinal cannabis would only be available to a patient when a consultant believes it should be.

“I am not making decisions about what medicine, authorised or otherwise, should be put into the body of any Irish citizen. That is a decision for a doctor.”